What’s the deal with shoe laces?

I was going to write about aloe vera. I did several stupid things while messing around with the fireplace two days ago and one of those stupid things involved using my finger to determine if something was too hot to touch. Normally I treat second degree burns with cold water and ice packs but this time I decided to try tearing off a piece of my aloe vera plant and squeezing the juice onto the burn.

I always thought this folk remedy was fairly bogus, but bits of the aloe vera are falling off anyway, so why not try it. Guess what! It worked. I squeezed the sap onto my finger three times over the next six hours whenever it started to sting and the pain would go away. There’s a white bubble of skin there now, but it hasn’t hurt at all.

Anyway, I was going to write about that, but one of my correspondents told me that nobody wants to hear about my blister. (Although, now that I think of it, Dave T would love to see it and would only be disappointed that it’s not at all gruesome.)

So…

What is the deal with shoelaces?

Recently one of my boot laces broke for the second time. After the first break, I reattached the two pieces with a fisherman’s knot, but you can’t really use this method for the second break because the knots don’t go through the eyelets on the boot. So, I had to buy new laces. Off I went to Big Buds where I perused the rack of laces.

I bought flat laces because they hold a bow better than round laces. Then I consulted the packages to determine which length to buy. Five holes = 27”. So there I am in Legal Drafting at the back of the class room and the prof is talking about sentence structure stuff that I figure I’m pretty hot on already, good time to put the new lace in the boot, I think.

Well, look at it. These laces barely come out the fourth pair of eyelets and yes, they are 27”. Why not tell me to buy longer laces? I would do it.

Okay. I can't do it. I was just going to stop there. But in the course of preparing this piece I read the whole back of the package. And below the thing about eyelet numbers it has this "ankle boots" thing followed by the skates, etc. block. I just figure ankle boots are for women and must have more than 5 eyelets and saw "skates" in the store but missed the whole "work, hiking, hunting boots" thing. Technically, my boots aren't work, hiking or hunting boots, but I see now I should have just bought longer laces for the boots.